


Bubblegum Blues

by trashy_chocolate



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: And post canon, Autistic Jeremy, Bc there's some explicit descriptions of noises that might be triggering, Gen, I meant to make it explicit but I forgot so it's just implied, If you have miso you might not wanna reas, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Me projecting my misophonia onto Jeremy? More likely than you think, Misdiagnosis, Misophonia, Pre-Canon, Suicidal Thoughts, in canon, mentions of an eating disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-12-12 12:07:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11736729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashy_chocolate/pseuds/trashy_chocolate
Summary: Jeremy had always been a sensitive kid. He hated the tags on shirts, refused to wear pants with zippers or buttons, cried at the sound of the velcro on his shoes ripping apart. Coupled with his unnaturally early development in walking and talking, the doctors said it could be signs of autism. They couldn't be sure until he was older, though.-(In which Jeremy has misophonia and I project a lot. A lot.)





	Bubblegum Blues

**Author's Note:**

> (banging my hands on the table) JEREMY!! HEERE!!! HAS!!! MISOPHONIA!!!

 

Jeremy had always been a sensitive kid. He hated the tags on shirts, refused to wear pants with zippers or buttons, cried at the sound of the velcro on his shoes ripping apart. Coupled with his unnaturally _early_ development in walking and talking, the doctors said it could be signs of autism. They couldn't be sure until he was older, though.

In third grade, the sound of chewing started getting on his nerves. Not just the average “crunching too loudly on potato chips” or “smacking gum” kind of chewing, but regular old eating. Sitting at the dinner table with his parents, or surrounded by noisily eating peers in the cafeteria at school, it was a bad noise. It made him uncomfortable, wanting to scratch at his ears until the sound went away.

In fourth grade, it was worse. More sounds were added to the arsenal, like silverware scraping on dishes, or the crinkling of plastic bags. His reactions got more intense, and he felt himself starting to want to _hurt_ the noise.

His teacher called him up to her desk at the end of school one day, saying that she'd heard from another student that he threatened them. He denied it, said there must've been a misunderstanding.

But it was true. The kid had been chewing gum, and it was grating at him, and he just wanted to focus on his stupid math worksheet. So he hissed an empty threat at the kid, bribed them with cough drops, and they spit out the gum. He was hoping they wouldn't tell.

Obviously they had.

Halfway through fourth grade, he had a meltdown after school. He hated feeling like this, feeling like he was going to lash out and hurt somebody at any given moment because of some stupid sounds. He hadn't bothered trying to tell anyone about it, not even Michael. He knew they'd write him off as crazy. He couldn't risk that.

Michael had found him, tried to help him calm down. But of course, he just had to have gum in his mouth, and it ended up making the situation worse. Jeremy panicked, and the moment was a blur, and all he knew was that he had hit Michael. _Michael,_ his best friend, the one person who’d been there for him after the entire student body declared him a freak. He had _hit_ him. And, like the stupid kid he was, he ran away.

He didn't run home, or to Michael's house, or anywhere someone would think to find him. He ran into the forest by the school, the one with a ton of trees and a little lake that was too small for boats but too big for a kid to swim in. He threw his backpack down under one of the trees and fell next to it, curling up against the steady trunk. He stayed under that tree for hours that night, crying and shaking and hitting himself because _who did he think he was, hurting his only friend like that? What was_ **_wrong_ ** _with him?_

Sometime after it got dark, he trudged home with his mud-covered bag and raw, tearstained cheeks. His mother yelled and his dad yelled and he felt bad but he couldn't undo what he did. Even after his mother slapped him and sent him up to his room, grounded for two weeks for “scaring” them with his absence. He would've laughed at that, if not for the fact that it would earn him more bruises. Even though he was only 10, he could clearly see that they wouldn't care if he disappeared forever. He was a freak child, a burden, and they all knew it.

The next day at school, he tried to ignore the strange look Michael was giving him all morning. It was a mix of concern and fear that left an uncomfortable knot in the pit of his stomach, and he didn't want to think about it.

Of course, at lunch, he pulled Michael into the boy's bathroom so no one else would see him crying as he apologized profusely for what happened the night before. Michael, bless his soul, assured him that it was alright. He just wanted to know _why,_ what happened, what was wrong? And through fractured sentences and sobs and multiple declarations of _“oh my god, I'm such a freak, oh god, what's wrong with me,”_ he managed to explain it.

Michael assured him that he would help with whatever this was, because no matter what, they were friends.

Days later, Michael showed him an article he'd found about something called “misophonia.” It took them both a few tries to say the word right, but after looking it over, Jeremy found that it matched his issue _exactly._

Everyday background noise, that most people filter out or don't notice, standing out in his hearing? Check. Feelings of fear, anger, paranoia, and general “unsafeness” in response to those noises? Check. Urges for or actions of violence towards self and/or the source of the noise? Unfortunately, check.

With Michael's help, Jeremy did some more research on misophonia, learning about the cause and possible treatments. The idea that it only got worse as you get older was depressing, but Michael assured him that he'd probably get better at coping and controlling himself as he got more experience. He found something called the “Misophonia Activation Scale,” or “MAS,” and realized that he ranked around a _nine_ on it. The idea that he could end up hurting people because of some stupid noises was scary, he didn't want to have to deal with it. But this was the brain life gave him, so he had to learn to cope.

With the resources they had found and support from his friend, he brought up the diagnosis to his parents. His mother was skeptical, saying he was probably only doing it for attention, but his dad seemed a lot more willing to listen to him. They let him homeschool for a couple years as he jumped from therapist to therapist trying to get a diagnosis in place. He had meetings with an audiologist to check his response to loud noise, and it checked out as abnormally high tolerance, which seemed to be typical for people with misophonia. One therapist declared that he had anger issues, and put him on anxiety medication, which did nothing to help his anxiety _or_ the misophonia. After that, his mother insisted he try a few other meds, all of which were to no avail, since it was a fundamental disorder, like autism, and not a matter of chemical misproduction, like depression or anxiety.

At the start of seventh grade, his tolerance appeared to increase severely, along with the discovery of a “Safe Person,” Michael, who his brain apparently decided wouldn't trigger him nearly as badly as others. With Michael by his side, he decided to go back to public school, mostly at his mother's insistence. He had a 504 plan set up, stating that he could use his headphones and step out of the classroom at any given time to avoid triggers, which all his teachers were informed of. Sure, things weren't perfect, but he was surviving.

When his mother left in his sophomore year, Michael was the first person he called. The only person he called. He felt bad, like it was somehow his fault, that she couldn't stand having such a freak for a son. At the same time, he was relieved that he never had to hear her constant invalidation again.

Michael was glad she was gone too, since she'd always rubbed him the wrong way. He didn't know the full extent of it, but he had enough late night texts from Jeremy to have solid ground to dislike her.

So he let Jeremy come over and they played video games, making sure to keep the game muted because he was already irritated and neither of them wanted him to snap. They didn't talk much, just sat next to each other and enjoyed the company. It was nice, relaxing, to have someone who always understood, no matter how crazy or stupid your problems were.

* * *

Then Jeremy got the squip.

It reinforced his beliefs that he was a freak, that everyone wanted him dead and gone. It promised that it would fix him, make him into something people would like. That's what he'd wanted, for a long time, just to… not be a walking failure.

It shocked him every time he had a violent thought when he got triggered, guiding him to turn the reactions to himself. When he needed to hurt, it would freeze his arms in place, shocking him until the urge was gone.

If he was alone when it happened, the squip would let him hurt himself. Nothing else, not even simple things like a pillow or a shirt. The only thing he was allowed to hurt was his own body. It shocked him away from using his arms and head, saying he should use his hips or legs instead. Places people couldn't see, so they wouldn't know he was a freak.

As their squips made them spend more time together, Rich slowly became another Safe Person. Not to the extent Michael had been, but a Safe Person nonetheless. Unfortunately, that didn't happen with anyone else in his new friend group, so when he was on a date with Brooke, or at play rehearsal with Christine, or at lunch in the school cafeteria with the whole group, he had to rely on the squip’s control over his body to seem normal.

After the whole ordeal at the Play, with the squips shut down and a mysterious subconscious bond between the seven of them, he began to actually hang out with the group. Mostly with Rich, bonding over their shared trauma, but he was invited to the mall when everyone was going out, invited over to get-togethers at Chloe's house. It was nice to have multiple real friends for a change, but they still weren't Safe.

When asked why he never sat with them at lunch anymore, he gave a half assed excuse about anxiety that no one really seemed to buy, but they let it slide anyways. They still seemed suspicious when he stepped out to go to the bathroom whenever they ate at the mall, or left class when someone pulled out a snack. He let them wonder, since he wasn't too eager to explain it, until Chloe came to the conclusion that he had an eating disorder. When she decided to confront him about it, he had to furiously dispel the idea with promises that he would explain later, he just wasn't ready to right now, but if she _really_ needed to know, ask Michael.

Thankfully, they respected his privacy, and nobody decided to ask Michael.

He told Rich first, after he'd pointed out that he and Michael were the only ones he seemed to eat around. It wasn't too difficult to explain, just saying that he had this weird thing where his brain processed noises incorrectly, causing him to have a “fight or flight response,” but for some reason Michael and Rich weren't threats so he could handle their noises. He took it well, not making any of the “oh, like this? (Insert obnoxious chewing noise here)” jokes one might've expected from him. Just a promise that if he ever accidentally triggered Jeremy, he could tell him, and he'd stop right away.

The rest of the group found out all at once, when he sent a link to an article about misophonia to the group chat, along with a brief text stating that this was why he left the room when people ate and such. They were mostly supportive, with similar promises to watch out for trigger noises they made and that they would do their best to stop if he asked. Chloe also apologized for the eating disorder comment, which was nice, and unusually kind of her, leading to the conversation turning to the subject of potential Chloe-cloning.

**  
** All in all, they were good friends, and Jeremy was glad he had them, no matter how fucked his brain might be.


End file.
